Rhetoric and Responsibility

Fifty police officers were dispatched to quell fighting at Ontario Beach Park, a City-owned/County-managed public park. There have been fights at that location before, and will likely be fights again in the future.

What I find most troubling is the rhetoric being used in the media: both print and radio. Phrases like "urban culture" and "go back to the jungle" are not even subtle code words or phrases that imply that the miscreants are African American. I don't know that they are, as photos were not shown of those arrested, nor did any police agency identify the race or ethnicity of those involved or arrested.

Why does this matter? I was raised to believe that words have power, and that we live up to (or down to) those words and phrases. For a community to accept these stereotyped descriptions for the participants in the fight is simply unacceptable. If we want violence to end, then we must treat one another as human beings, deserving of dignity and respect.

Does that mean that we should tolerate fighting? Absolutely not. But we must take care not to inflate the tension by the ugly name-calling that is occurring now.

As a child, growing up in small-town, rural upstate, I witnessed plenty of fighting on the school grounds and in neighborhoods. Boys were involved, as were girls from time to time. My daughters attended a suburban school, where fights occurred regularly (sometimes the media paid attention, mostly they did not).

The problem yesterday seems to be the number of young people involved in a small area, while the fights themselves could have happened anywhere. Name calling by adults, some of whom have a radio or television audience, needs to stop.

Call for parental responsibility, call for teens to find alternatives, make needed arrests if you must, but don't add to the tension and hostility by denigrating all those who were at the park, or affected by the fights. Pathways to Peace and Teen Empowerment are effective tools to reach these young people and to find them alternatives to the violence. Adequate funding for these two organizations would cost substantially less than sending 50 police officers to break up an incident.

Words have power. Before you respond to a post with a racist remark or go on the radio using code words for African Americans, take a moment to reflect. You have the opportunity to reduce the violence and defuse the situation. Or, you can inflame it and continue the cycle of violence and racism.